(1937-2016) UK science journalist (chiefly in the London Daily Telegraph, of which he was the science correspondent from 1977 to 1996 and thereafter the consulting editor for science) and occasional sf author; he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and an enthusiastic advocate of Space Flight. His sf novels – the Koyama sequence comprising Koyama's Diamond: A Novel of the Far Future (1982) and Labyrinth of Lies (1984) – are set in a Far-Future planetary system with much political intrigue, with some interesting ideas and plot turns; but they are written in a lurid style reminiscent of 1930s Pulp magazines.

Berry's more important service to sf has been the publication of a number of nonfiction science books about the future (see Futures Studies), including the bestselling The Next Ten Thousand Years: A Vision of Man's Future in the Universe (1974) as well as The Iron Sun: Crossing the Universe through Black Holes (1977) – expounding in a lively if not altogether rigorous fashion the contemporary speculation that Black Holes could somehow be used as Wormholes for easy interstellar travel – and From Apes to Astronauts (coll 1980). The topics discussed in these books – mostly to do with physics and speculative Technology – are among those much exploited by Hard-SF writers in the 1970s and ever since. The Giant Leap: Mankind Heads for the Stars (1999) sets further hard-headed speculations on how to achieve manned travel in space over the next decades into a context of politicized arguments about the inevitable primacy of corporate enterprise; the sense that the book is a Libertarian tract should not, however, deter readers from benefiting from the clear exposition that survives. In 2001 Berry inherited the title of Viscount Camrose. [PN/JC/DRL]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →